Month: April 2017

I saw a quote somewhere once that said something about being fit is 20% working out and 80% what you eat. I agree with that idea because when I was a member of a Crossfit gym I witnessed people who came and worked hard every day for years, but still looked the same as they did when they first started. This is all due to diet. I’m not talking about those unhealthy fad diets, but your daily diet or what I will call it from here on out: your eating plan. What do you eat every day?

I’ve followed many different programs in my life when it comes to eating plans from vegetarian to Paleo to eating clean to following a created plan from a book. The one thing I’ve discovered is the same in all these plans is don’t eat junk food and eat lots of fruits and vegetables. The same is true for the Beachbody eating plans.

The other thing that is the same is that you need to plan ahead in order to be successful. First, get that junk food out of your house! If you don’t buy you can’t eat it! I used to buy Oreos for a treat for my kids because I dislike Oreos and knew I wouldn’t be tempted to eat them. Another critical component of the plan is to have a plan: what are you going to eat for each meal each day of the upcoming week. I tend to eat the same thing every day for a week when it comes to lunches and snacks and have variety in my breakfasts and dinners.

If you are just trying to be healthier, cutting out junk and limiting sugar should be enough, but if you are trying to lose weight then you need to consider portion sizes and cutting out calories. I’ve spent many years of my life diligently counting calories, sometimes even breaking down each food item into calories by carbs, fats, and proteins. Beachbody makes portion control super easy. Those little, plastic, color-coded containers (see photo above) take away all the time consuming math. You still have to do a little bit of math in the beginning to figure out your calorie range and how many of each container you are eating each day, but that is nothing compared to what I used to do.

With all that said, the hardest part of eating healthy is you have to cook. Junk and processed foods are easy to grab and eat, but healthy food that is good for you takes prep and cooking. I wish I had a personal chef, that would make eating right super easy, but like most people I don’t. So it has to become a priority. We won’t be perfect at it all the time, but it needs to be a constant effort to stay on track.

Day One of the 21 Day Fix is in the books! Feeling super motivated to crush these 21 days!

The workout was harder than I expected with some movements that I’ve never really done before with weights, so that was great to be working muscles in different and new ways. I burned 304 calories during the 30 minutes, which is just under the 340 I burned yesterday in 30 minutes doing a 2 mile run with a walking cool down. During the workout the time didn’t feel like it was dragging so that is always a plus when working out.

My food felt a little off because I’m still waiting for the color coordinated portion containers to arrive in the mail, so I had to do some guessing on portion sizes. I felt like I hardly ate anything, but still was really full all day. My eating is also a little off because I’m on Spring Break this week and getting up later than usual which means I ate my first meal later than I would on a work day.

I’m excited to have a program with structure to follow. I’ve done well in the past with structured programs, so I hope to be able to eventually turn this into a way of life.

I originally started this blog as a way to motivate myself. As you can see from the lack of posts, that didn’t work out so well. I’ve still not given up on my quest to live a happy, healthy and active lifestyle, and therefore I’ve been looking for a new direction.

Over the course of my adult life I’ve been a runner, training for 5Ks and 10Ks, and a triathlete, training for Sprint and Olympic distance races. I’ve gone to a mega-gym and had a personal trainer where I would do days of strength training and days of cardio. I’ve purchased various workout DVDs and the eating plans that come with those. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I own countless books on fitness and healthy eating. And I even joined a Crossfit gym for about a year and a half. All of these things have been great and following them have helped me to not be overweight and sick.

So now, six months after starting this blog and floundering with my fitness and eating habits, I’m making a change. Tomorrow, April 25, 2017, I’m starting the 21 Day Fix program from Beachbody. I’m going to follow both the workout and eating plans and document my journey on social media as well as this blog. I’m also going to start being a Beachbody Coach so I will also be posting things to help inspire others on their own journeys.